Art in Theory. Группа авторов
It seems to have been a Persian word, since Zenophon and other Greek authors mention it, as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those Eastern countries … So that a Paradise among them seems to have been a large space of ground, adorned and beautified with all sorts of trees, both of fruits and of forest, either found there before it was enclosed, or planted after; either cultivated like Gardens, for shades and for walks, with Fountains or streams, and all sorts of plants usual in the climate, and pleasant to the eye, the smell, or the taste; or else employed, like our Parks, for enclosure and harbour of all sorts of wild beasts, as well as for the pleasure of riding and walking […]
In every Garden four things are necessary to be provided for, flowers, fruit, shade, and water; and whoever lays out a Garden without all these, must not pretend it in any perfection: It ought to lie to the best parts of the House, or to those of the master’s commonest use, so as to be but like one of the rooms out of which you step into another. The part of your Garden next your House, (besides the walks that go round it) should be a parterre for flowers, or grass plots bordered with flowers; or if, according to the newest mode, it be cast all into grass spots and gravel walks, the dryness of these should be relieved with Fountains, and the plainness of those with Statues. […]
The best Figure of a Garden is either a square or an oblong, and either upon a flat or a descent; they all have their beauties, but the best I esteem an oblong upon a descent …
The perfectest Figure of a Garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire when I knew it about thirty years ago. […] It lies on the side of a hill, (upon which the House stands) but not very steep. The length of the House, where the best rooms, and of the most use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden, the great parlour opens into the middle of a terrace gravel walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I remember, about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion, the border set with standard laurels, and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange trees out of flower and fruit; from this walk are three descents by many stone steps in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two Fountains and eight Statues in the several quarters; at the end of the terrace walk are two summer houses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters open to the Garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer houses even with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for walks of shade, there being none other in the whole parterre. […]
What I have said of the best Forms of Gardens, is meant only of such as are in some sort of regular; for there may be other Forms wholly irregular, that may, for aught I know, have more beauty than any of the others; but they must owe it to some extraordinary dispositions of Nature in the seat, or some great race of Fancy or judgement in the contrivance, which may reduce many disagreeing parts into some Figure which shall yet upon the whole, be very agreeable. Something of this I have seen in some places, but heard more of it from others, who have lived among the Chineses; a people, whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe, as their country does. Among us, the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly, in some certain proportions, symmetries, or uniformities; our Walks and our trees ranged so, as to answer one another, and at exact distances. The Chineses scorn this way of planting, and say a boy that can tell [count to] an hundred, may plant Walks of trees in straight lines, and over against one another, and to what length and extent he pleases. But their greatest reach of Imagination, is employed in contriving Figures, where the Beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts, that shall be commonly or easily observed. And though we have hardly any notion of this sort of Beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it; and where they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any such expression of esteem. And whoever observes the work upon the best Indian gowns, or the painting upon their best Screens or Porcelains, will find their Beauty is all of this kind (that is) without order. But I should hardly advise any of these attempts in the figure of Gardens among us; they are adventures of too hard achievement for any common Hands; and though there may be more Honour if they succeed well, yet there is more Dishonour if they fail and ’tis twenty to one they will.
IC16 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) from ‘Preface’ to Novissima Sinica
Philosopher and mathematician, Leibniz invented the calculus at the same time, and independently of, Isaac Newton, and developed the binary number system of 0 and 1 which lies at the basis of the modern computer. Leibniz also shared the fascination of many other enquiring minds of his day with China. His writings are not, however, concerned with material culture, let alone with art, but with Chinese philosophy and religion. Leibniz was fascinated by the possibility that his binary numbering system echoed the yin and yang principles of ancient Chinese thought. He was also involved in the contentious debate over whether the Confucian philosophy was essentially secular, and could thus be retained by the Chinese were they to be converted to Christianity, or whether it amounted to a form of paganism and must therefore be renounced before the Chinese could become Christian. Influenced by Jesuit missionaries, who entered China via the Portuguese colonies of Goa and Macao and who constituted his main sources of information, Leibniz took the former position (in contrast to that of the more Spanish‐influenced Dominicans and Franciscans who tended to the latter). In 1697, and again in 1699, Leibniz published the Novissima Sinica (‘The Latest News from China’), a collection of writings by Jesuits active in the country. For this, he wrote a preface from which we include a short extract in the present anthology because in it Leibniz offers a striking sense of the esteem which many early modern European intellectuals felt for China, in sharp contrast to the subsequent negativity which came to mark views of ‘the Orient’ during the imperialist period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our source is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Writings on China, translated with an introduction, notes and commentaries by Daniel J. Cook and Henry Rosemont Jr, Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1994; the extracts are from pp. 45–7 and 50–1. (An extract from Leibniz’s writing on art and beauty can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815, ID9, pp. 233–8.)
I consider it a singular plan of the fates that human cultivation and refinement should today be concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes of our continent, in Europe and in Tschina (as they call it), which adorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite edge of the earth. Perhaps Supreme Providence has ordained such an arrangement, so that as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be brought to a better way of life….
Now the Chinese Empire, which challenges Europe in cultivated area and certainly surpasses her in population, vies with us in many other ways in almost equal combat, so that now they win, now we. But what should I put down first by way of comparison? To go over everything, even though useful, would be lengthy and is not our proper task in this place. In the useful arts and in practical experience with natural objects we are, all things considered, about equal to them, and each people has knowledge which it could with profit communicate to the other. In profundity of knowledge and in the theoretical disciplines we are their superiors. For besides logic and metaphysics, and the knowledge of things incorporeal, which we justly claim as peculiarly our province, we excel by far in the understanding of concepts which are abstracted by the mind from the material, i.e., in things mathematical, as is in truth demonstrated when Chinese astronomy comes into competition with our own. The Chinese are thus seen to be ignorant of that great light of the mind, the art of demonstration, and they have remained content with a sort of empirical geometry, which our artisans universally possess. They also yield to us in military science.
But who would have believed that there is on earth a people who, though we are in our view so very advanced in every branch of behavior, still surpass us in comprehending the precepts of civil life? Yet now we find this to be so among the Chinese, as we learn to know them better. And so if we are their equals in the industrial arts, and ahead of them in contemplative sciences, certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and use of mortals. Indeed,